RE: Court-Ordered Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) Violations
The Honorable Rohit Chopra
Director
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
1700 G Street NW
Washington, DC 20552
Dear Director Chopra:
The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU), the Credit Union National Association (CUNA), the American Bankers Association (ABA), and America's Mutual Banks (AMB) (collectively, the Associations) write to you today to highlight significant threats to Americans' financial privacy and mutually-owned financial institutions (FI). Together, the Associations represent the full spectrum of U.S. FIs, from the country's smallest credit unions and community banks to some of the largest credit unions and banks in the world, that, in turn, serve hundreds of millions of American consumers with personal and business financial services products. In Seidman v. Spencer Sav. Bank, the Superior Court of New Jersey for Passaic County, New Jersey (NJ Superior Court) has run roughshod over the GLBA in ways that require Spencer Savings Bank (Spencer) to violate all of its members' financial privacy and potentially undermine all mutually-owned banks' and credit unions' capacity to serve, maintain, and attract members. The CFPB has general GLBA rulemaking authority and a statutory responsibility to ensure that inconsistent state legislation, regulation, executive action, and judicial orders do not displace the GLBA's requirements.
The Associations strongly encourage the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to track this and any similar litigation and to more fully partner with state financial regulators to uphold the GLBA. Specifically, we ask that the CFPB issue guidance that provides no state legislature, regulator, executive, or court may circumvent the requirements in Regulation P that FIs provide consumers adequate financial privacy notices and generally prohibit FIs from disclosing consumers' nonpublic personal information to nonaffiliated third parties without consumers' notice or consent, with certain well-defined exceptions. Additionally, we ask the CFPB to consider taking direct legal action in Seidman v. Spencer Sav. Bank to prevent the unlawful disclosure of tens of thousands of consumers' nonpublic personal information.
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